Motion planning for robot arm manipulators with proximity sensing

The problem of sensor-based path planning for robot arm manipulators operating among unknown obstacles of arbitrary shape is considered. It has been known that, in principle, algorithms with proven convergence can be designed for planar and simple three-dimensional robot arms operating under such conditions. However, implementation of these algorithms presents a variety of hardware and algorithmic problems related to covering the robot arm with a sensitive skin, processing data from large arrays of sensors, and designing algorithms for step-by-step motion planning based on limited information. The authors describe the hardware and the lower-level control algorithms of a system for robot motion planning in an uncertain environment and summarize results of experiments with the system.<>